Keith Joseph

There was a fleeting moment when it seemed possible that Keith Joseph, who has died aged 76, would become leader of the Conservative party. The double general election defeats in 1974 had left the Tories dispirited and directionless. Throughout that year and early in 1975 Joseph made a number of major speeches on the economic principles which should guide the party. They were a vigorous restatement of classical economic liberalism, borrowing from the contemporary academic teachings of Frederick von Hayek and Chicago's Professor Milton Friedman. It was - in contemporary jargon - the message of monetarism.

Edward Heath, then leading the Conservatives, did not respond charitably to this innovation: "A good man fallen amongst monetarists. They've robbed him of all his judgment. Not that he ever had much in the first place". The comment was characteristically churlish, but Heath undoubtedly felt pique at those who had served silently throughout the Cabinet decisions of 1970-74 and who were then so noisily introspective following the general election defeat.

Joseph certainly demonstrated maladroit judgment when he spoke at Birmingham on the subject of the cycle of social deprivation. The cycle was attributed to a combination of the young and poor in a climate of sexual freedom perpetuating a deprived class with little effective hope of self-improvement.

The observation was neither novel or offensive but the choice of such phrases as "the balance of our human stock is threatened" invited misrepresentation. The uproar that followed had Joseph protesting that he was misunderstood and apologising and redefining what he had intended to say. It is no exaggeration to say that his tactlessness and subsequent confusion lost him any chance of replacing Edward Heath as leader.

It is also true that, at heart, he did not have the spine for leadership. The Edgbaston speech merely revealed that underlying reality. Joseph quickly withdrew from a contest he had not truly entered, and later observed "I hadn't the political antennae, the political flair". It was a characteristically honest observation, but there were other shortcomings. He was too kind to have the butcher instincts required of a party leader and whilst intellectually razor sharp, he was indecisive and given to public agonising.

The Conservative party, happily, was spared the leadership of Joseph but was amply compensated by his skills and dedication as the intellectual leader during the opposition years 1975-79. Together with the party leader Margaret Thatcher and William Whitelaw he formed an effective troika of Tory leadership. The Conservatives won a striking general election victory in 1979 and the subsequent years in government demonstrated how well prepared they had been for office. Keith Joseph was given overall responsibility for policy in 1975, and with a relatively modest band of close supporters directed the Conservative party towards the German-style social market philosophy. It was this achievement which makes his career indispensable in the understanding of "the Thatcher years "and which places Joseph among near-leaders alongside Butler, Oliver Stanley and Austen Chamberlain.

Keith Joseph was born into an Ashkenazi Jewish family. He remained devoted to the Jewish faith throughout his life. His father was a self-made businessman, founding the construction company of Bovis, and becoming Lord Mayor of London. The baronetcy, then customary for a Lord Mayor, was inherited by Keith Joseph. Time at Harrow and Magdalen College, Oxford, was dominated by cricket.

Devotion to cricket did not prevent Joseph getting a first in law. During the second world war Joseph, as a Captain in the Royal Artillery, fought in Italy where he was wounded and mentioned in despatches. After the war Joseph took up his fellowship at All Souls where he commenced a thesis on political, racial and religious tolerance. He never completed this work, preferring to join the family business.

Joseph soon showed an interest in public affairs, being elected to the common council of the City of London Corporation and to the finance and general purposes committee of the National Council of Social Services. He contested the parliamentary constituency of Barons Court in the 1955 general election and was narrowly beaten. Shortly afterwards he entered the Commons in the Leeds North by election. The constituency was faithful to him throughout his parliamentary career.

Although never a dominant speaker he had an earnest fluency and a painstaking command of his subect. He specialised on social issues - not always the most favoured topics with Tories - and soon won recognition. Looking back on this period he later commented "my main motivation was then as it has been since, the escape of a society and individuals from poverty". His generally liberal instincts also led him to oppose - subvertly - the Suez expedition in 1957.

Notwithstanding this veiled dissent he held junior and middle rank ministerial office at the turn of the 1960s involving the Housing Ministry and the Board of Trade. His high-flying potential was confirmed in July 1962 when he was a beneficiary of Macmillan's "night of the long knives", entering the cabinet as minister for housing and local government and minister for Welsh affairs whilst in his mid-forties.

Joseph was an active - even interventionist - minister. He eschewed free market options such as rent deregulation and used state resources to launch a major building programme including tower blocks estates. When the Conservatives were defeated in October 1964 there was under construction a record number of 421,000 homes. With charming self-effacement Joseph subsequently confessed that his policies had been modish and misguided. The tower blocks were a planner's dream but a tenant's disaster.

Joseph, possibly, was more aware of these failures than his political contemporaries. He certainly continued to enjoy a growing reputation and prospered during the opposition years of 1964-70. His interests expanded to cover economic and financial affairs whilst maintaining his commitment to social issues.

In the light of subsequent events it is significant that he did not get embroiled in the arguments over incomes policy which bedevilled the Conservative party at this time, but welcomed the Selsdon Park declaration with its commitment to trade union reform, lower direct taxation, and greater competition.

The Conservative 1970 general election victory resulted in Joseph being appointed secretary of state for health and social services. It was a post he held throughout the parliament. Joseph had an unwieldy, high-spending department. A correspondent from the Times judged that "no solution was found to the chronic financial problems of the NHS and in the reorganisation of the service excessive deference was paid to the susceptibilities of doctors".

This was not an over-harsh judgment and was endorsed later by Joseph who confessed that his record as a public spender sat ill with his subsequent exhortations for retrenchment. Joseph's outspoken comments in 1974-75 were prompted by genuine concern over the state of Britain. He had been made shadow home secretary by Edward Heath after the election defeat, but chose to speak largely on economic issues.

With Margaret Thatcher he established a free enterprise think-tank, the Centre for Policy Studies. The venture had the grudging acquiescence of Edward Heath, and became a focal point for such devoted evangelists of free enterprise as Alfred Sherman, Alan Walters and Peter Bauer.

Joseph was aided by two powerful factors in his determination to restate the principles of social market economy and re-direct Conservative policy. First there was a deep fear of inflation, partly related to the huge increase in OPEC oil prices, which led to a revival in the esteemed virtues of disciplined budgets.

Secondly there was a void in the Conservative party. The natural exponent of liberal economics would have been Enoch Powell, but he had stood down in the 1974 February general election, and had returned to the Commons as an Ulster Unionist in the following October. Joseph's campaign to educate his party included a notable speech at Preston which virtually re-wrote policy. Some years later Joseph reflected upon this episode and concluded "My first decades as an MP should really have been under the flag, had there been such a party, of well-intentioned statism".

Such soul-searching is not the stuff of politics. Even so these were the golden years of Joseph's career. Having stepped aside from the leadership contest he was able to promote the success of Margaret Thatcher. She rewarded him by making him the policy supremo of her shadow cabinet. He gave intellectual ballast to her vigorous intuitive judgments. It was a formidable partnership that equipped the Conservative party to produce a radical programme after the 1979 victory. In some ways Keith Joseph seemed an unlikely character to have been so successful a pioneer in ideas. He never dominated the Commons and he was not particularly incisive in committee. Probably he was happiest at the Centre for Policy Studies exchanging his challenging ideas with academics.

After the general election victory of 1979 Margaret Thatcher made Keith Joseph the secretary of state for industry. It was something of an anti-climax as the department was not a major Whitehall fiefdom. Joseph was obliged to offer financial lifelines to British Shipbuilders, British Rail and British Leyland. It was easy to caricature this as apostasy but in due course shipbuilding and the motor industry passed to the private sector. Joseph confronted his critics by resisting the steel strikers and eventually outfacing them. Keith Joseph welcomed the move to Education in 1981. He had always wanted the office and relished the challenge which was more intangible and philosophic than the problems of industry. The academic and teaching professions accepted his appointment warily.

They need not have been unduly alarmed. Once again Keith Joseph 's powerful rhetoric was matched by more circumspect action. Whilst in office he saw the merging of the O-level and CSE exams. It was a start towards his aim of a national curriculum and of testing, but he moved warily leaving his successor to build upon his achievement. It was characteristic of his integrity and political naivete that he sought a modest expansion in his science budget by seeking a parental charge for university tuition fees, thus requiring no net increase in public spending. The Tory middle classes were outraged and Joseph was obliged to abandon his plan. Ironically this relatively minor issue left a more indelible mark than Joseph's pioneering work to promote structured teaching in schools and university reform.

In 1986 he left the government and received a life peerage. He was a reasonably frequent attender in the House of Lords and used it as a platform for arguing the social market economy cause. He also became increasingly wary of developments in the European Community. He was alert to the danger that Brussels would promote centralisation rather than more open trade. As ever he argued with an intensity balanced by acknowledged self doubt and with great courtesy to his opponents.

He twice married firstly to Hellen Guggenheimer in 1951 by whom he had a son and three daughters. They were divorced in 1978 and thereafter he married Yolanda Sheriff.

Keith Sinjohn Joseph, Baron Joseph of Portsoken born January 17 1918, died December 10 1994

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About this article

Keith Joseph

This article was published on
the Guardian website
at 09.51 EST on Monday 12 December 1994.
It was last modified at 09.51 EDT on Friday 1 July 2005.
It was first published at 09.51 EDT on Friday 1 July 2005.